Guido Cagnacci Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

January 19, 1601 Rimini, ITA – May 3, 1663 Vienna, AUT

Guido Cagnacci an Italian Baroque painter, who produced many works characterized by their use of chiaroscuro and their erotic subjects. The most sensual of the Emilian painters and his nudes introduced an overtly erotic note into the art of seventeenth century Europe. He was influenced by the masters of the Bolognese School.

Guido Cagnacci was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna, near Rimini. He worked in Rimini from 1627 to 1642. After that, he moved to work in Forlì, where he would have been able to observe the paintings of Melozzo.

Before living in Forlì he had been in Rome, where he had interacted with Guercino, Guido Reni, He spent two years in the studio of the Roman master Guercino. His initial output includes many devotional subjects. However, moving to Venice he changed his name to Guido Baldo Canlassi da Bologna, and re-established a friendship with Nicolas Regnier, committing himself to private salon paintings, frequently portraying sensuous bare women from thigh upwards, including Suicide Of Cleopatra, and The Repentant Magdalene.

Cagnacci's career ended rather unusually; while all his older colleagues chose to go to Rome or Naples, he went north and lived in the court of Leopold I in Vienna from 1658 until his death. This can be seen as a small but significant sign of the gradual decline of Italy's central role in the world of art.